Things you survived, but probably shouldn't have

[steve white]

I am thankful to be alive and well, particularly when I think about all the things that could have killed/mangled me. When I was young, we were expected to do things that involved some risk--like climbing a rope up to the top of the gym bldg. without falling as part of physical education, or being thrown into deep water and told to swim. Those were mild preparations for life's risks.
Often we take the lesser of two evils: like, walk back 15 miles to camp after the swamp buggy has broken down Kilombero Tanzania, or talk locals into paddling you in a mokoro through hippo infested waters during the breeding season. Now THAT was a wild ride with many an occasion for everyone on board to jack a cartridge into the chamber and prepare to repel boarders. Fortunately, we made it without disaster. But it makes a nice bed time story....
I can tell you that having a tornado hit your house while you are inside will set a man praying! So will having a near tornado skitter your little pirogue around the edge of a lake. A friend had his pickup picked up by a tornado while driving--it lifted him over the high lines and set him down in a field.

What have you experienced that in hind sight makes you thankful to be alive?

 

[cwpayton]

wow Luv this post. I cant compete, but, the time I was unloading a small john deer dozer off an old bob tail truck on an incline, no emergency brake, had some kind of chalk and left it in gear, when I started to unload the dozer the truck jumped out of gear and the 1 chalk and started rolling toward a steep grade. I bailed off hit the ground and fell. my hard hat was crushed I looked at the woman watching it all and said , wow that was close, she was white as a sheet and finally said " you dont even want to know".
Time I rolled my pickup pulling a full load of hay down a steep long grade, it started fish tailing couldnt get it to stop and as it got so bad ,i looked at my wife and said I cant hold it ,hang on. went across the lane of on coming traffic and hit the only bank there was before and after a 200 ft drop , hay all over the road and totaled f250. wife broke ribs. wow that was close. I was ok .
Hunting Colorado went into the Winnemucce wilderness ,came out after dark after crossing the river and climbing up a grade. got dark and I couldn't see more than a few feet ,no moon. I could see lights a mile or more away along the road on my right, I kept throwing rocks over the cliff but couldn't hear any response, finally heard sone clatter and bounce, after several more rock throws I scrambled down a steep draw of boulders and out on the flat of wind fall dead trees so thick a cat couldnt get through. bloody and tired I stumbled into camp .

 

[Tundra Tiger]

1. Flipping an ATV loaded with caribou over on top of me in a stream. The handle bars had my head pinned to the creek bottom. My buddy was hiking a couple hundred yards behind me and heard my muffled yell. As near as we could figure I was under 30 seconds or so before he was able tomove it enough to free me. It was way too long - too much time to think. I often solo hunted back then but had a friend along that day of all days.

2. Being morbidly obese and having a 99% blockage of a major artery. I live in a remote village. I waited a month before going in to get checked out, telling myself I was imagining it the day I felt chest pains. During that month I hunted and snowmachined, sometimes getting stuck and having to dig/lift my machine out. 13 years and 100 pounds later, I have checked out healthy annually every year since.

God knows the number of our days, even when our stupidity tries to force His hand.

 

[odonata]

Based on the demographics of a lot of the members of this site, I'm probably not unique in having a blood clot block an artery 100% and getting to experience an unplanned visit to an operating table. I'm sure there's several people who will be able to say "Been there! Done that!" (while I was typing this @Tundra Tiger's post appeared above).

Before & after: My chest felt a lot better in the second photo once that blank area in the first photo started getting some blood again.

There's nothing like four days in the ICU to give you time to rethink your priorities while staring at the ceiling listening to machines beep (and cursing the fact that you can't roll over because of all the wires attached to you).

My nephew was stationed with the Army in Korea. I was inspired by his uplifting concern for my well-being.

All's well that ends well. With some really good medical care, I was able to make a long-planned trip with my daughter to go camping, sea kayaking & snorkeling at the Dry Tortugas National Park a couple of months later.

There are only two other times that I can think of that approached "life threatening". One was when I almost got crushed by a speeding car going the wrong way down the interstate outside of Vicksburg. It was totally unexpected & I barely missed a violent head-on collision. The other was when I got caught in a bad storm in a small boat during the dead of winter out in the middle of Lake Yellowstone with no one around. If we had wound up in the water, we would have lasted about 15 minutes. Let's just say the tension was about as bad as the hypothermia I was feeling.

 

[Tundra Tiger]

Based on the demographics of a lot of the members of this site, I'm probably not unique in having a blood clot block an artery 100% and getting to experience an unplanned visit to an operating table. I'm sure there's several people who will be able to say "Been there! Done that!" (while I was typing this @Tundra Tiger's post appeared above).

View attachment 728230
Before & after: My chest felt a lot better in the second photo once that blank area in the first photo started getting some blood again.

View attachment 728231
There's nothing like four days in the ICU to give you time to rethink your priorities while staring at the ceiling listening to machines beep (and cursing the fact that you can't roll over because of all the wires attached to you).

View attachment 728232

My nephew was stationed with the Army in Korea. I was inspired by his uplifting concern for my well-being.

View attachment 728237

All's well that ends well. With some really good medical care, I was able to make a long-planned trip with my daughter to go camping, sea kayaking & snorkeling at the Dry Tortugas National Park a couple of months later.

There are only two other times that I can think of that approached "life threatening". One was when I almost got crushed by a speeding car going the wrong way down the interstate outside of Vicksburg. It was totally unexpected & I barely missed a violent head-on collision. The other was when I got caught in a bad storm in a small boat during the dead of winter out in the middle of Lake Yellowstone with no one around. If we had wound up in the water, we would have lasted about 15 minutes. Let's just say the tension was about as bad as the hypothermia I was feeling.

View attachment 728268

I immediately felt a kinship with you reading that brother. Glad you got it turned around as well.

 

[Whit]

My cousin and I were on an ATV going about 25-30 miles a hour in our early teenage years. He was driving, I was backseat. We hit a barbed wire fence at that speed, and flipped the ATV on its side. Thankfully, we were both small enough -- and blessed enough, thank the Lord -- to avoid being crushed, and with the elasticity and vitality of youth, we shook off the flip, and thought little of it. With the same cousin, I remember walking on an icy pond in the dead of winter. Thankfully, the ice carried our weight. My aunt was not happy when we told her.

I remember firing a .22 LR at my old denture impressions at the base of a tree at the age of 13 or so. Maybe four feet away. Multiple shots. Yes, extraordinarily stupid... for a kid who had already graduated from the state of Arkansas's hunter safety course. The Lord certainly protected me from immense self-inflicted harm.

In adulthood, I hiked up and over a rocky formation, while in the midst of rain and lightning, to make good time on the Te Araroa trail in NZ. The wrong slip, and I was probably a good 24 hours away from help...

I'm sure there are a few more stories which will eventually come to mind.

 

[Wade J VanGinkel]

When i was 16 I got a job working on a ranch outside of Charlo Montana. I was given the task of hay raking one morning. I don't remember why I even got off the tractor but foolishly decided to try and jump on as it started rolling away. I was more worried that it wasn't my tractor than about getting hurt lol.
Woke up in the hospital with both legs broken and a bunch of ribs. The rake cut my back up pretty bad but fortunately it was a pto rake and it wasn't spinning. That would have likely killed me for sure.

 

[Boyd Brooks]

While installing hydro poles, I auger through a 12” 900psi gas main. The utility locate marks were off by nearly 15 feet. The gas guys said what probably saved our crew was the fact I hadn’t cleaned any dirt from the auger, so not enough air if it did spark, so nothing happened. It took over a hour for the gas to drain from the pipeline at the closest valves were turned off.
While fly back to camp from the diamond drill in a helicopter the rear door window of the A-star blew out, because the cross shift helper broke the window with a bundle of core boxes. The pilot shoved his insulated pants in the hole as he flew bare handed and at minus 40ish found the wind a little chilly. So out goes the window and his pants, next thing we a upside down doing circles, and I’m thinking we are going to die. The driller was white as a ghost and the pilot was in my ears saying were’s my pants. After he brings the chopper back upright and he says “ fuck those were 200.00 dollar pants, you guys didn’t see them fall”, I realized that the pilot had things under control. We buzzed around a couple more minutes before continuing to camp. When we landed at camp his pants were stuck on the skid gear. I didn’t know helicopters could fly inverted, but do now.
The pilot was amazing he could hover a long line steady enough for us to disassemble the drill, tower, motor, transmission/winch just using your fingers on the bolts. Or land me at the supply pump with the needles coming off the black spruce.
There are other close calls in my youth that usually involved alcohol, but that’s for another thread.

 

[Newboomer]

I immediately felt a kinship with you reading that brother. Glad you got it turned around as well.

I immediately felt a kinship with you reading that brother. Glad you got it turned around as well.

My buddy and I got a wild hair and "borrowed" an old guy's boat and went out on the pond. We were about 5 years old at the time and invincible, so we thought. We were doing pretty good til the wind came up and I lost my paddle. We couldn't get to it, then Gil lost his paddle. We were drifting around trying to keep the boat upright when a neighbor happened along and got another boat and hauled us back to shore.
Another time a bunch of us went over to Catalina for the weekend and got a late start coming home. My boat was an 18 ft runabout and not quite the thing for 8 to 10 foot waves. As soon as we cleared the breakwater and I saw that I knew that was going to be an experience. We had the bilge pump going full blast and my wife was bailing as fast as she could. That was the first time I had ever been out of sight of land except for a navy ship. I had read somewhere that waves come in threes, the third one being the biggest. Well, I learned in a hurry to read the waves and steer into them. That was a wild rollercoaster ride and we made it with no damage. I was too busy to feel panic, fear or anything but it hit me as soon as we tied up and got on dry land. Then I started shaking. Hellova way to start playing with boats.
The Catalina Channel is some of the roughest water on the west coast, waves running north to south so you have to zigzag across when the seas come up. Many the times we came across taking green water on the flybridge of a 42 foot sportfisher. Fun times and it never bothered me after that first trip.

 

[roklok]

I had two particularly close brushes with death, one in 2018 and one in 2019. In 2018 I drew an archery tag for elk on Etolin island in SE Alaska. I had a bush pilot drop me and a buddy off on a small lake in the mountains with a float plane. The lake had one way in and one way out for approach and takeoff, the other three sides were steep mountains. The one way in and out (open end of the lake) had a waterfall with a hundred feet or so drop-off over cliffs and timber. The stuff nightmares are made of. We hunted for a week or so without seeing an elk. When we got picked up there was a tailwind coming down off the mountains. We were at the point of no return on take-off with the tail-wind when the pilot said "oh shit" or something to that effect. The end of the lake was approaching fast with gnarly log jams and towering trees, and the plane still had not lifted off from the water. At what seemed like the last possible instant the plane lifted off from the water barely clearing the log jam. We were flying BETWEEN the trees at the end of the lake, not over them, with trees on both sides just off wingtips. It was CLOSE !! Scared me pretty bad. I turned to my buddy in the back seat, we were speechless and both had a look like we had just seen our ghosts. I have had numerous close calls on the rivers in Alaska, but that was my closest brush with death related to hunting.

In 2019 I was expanding a corner on my driveway to allow a well drilling rig to access our house site. The driveway is steep in that section. I was on my loader tractor digging dirt out of the bank. I was backing up with a scoop of dirt and loader bucket about half raised. The upper rear tire rolled up on a stump that I had not seen concealed by grass, and the tractor rolled over FAST. I still do not know how I made it off that tractor that quick. I remember hitting the ground on my hands and knees scrambling to clear the rolling tractor. Somehow I was able to clear the tractor as it came to rest upside down, thankfully it did not continue to roll. I was alone on our remote property, my wife was out of state visiting family, and my cell phone had fallen out of my pocket and was crushed under the tractor. Even if I had just been trapped and not outright killed by the tractor I would have had a tough time surviving as it would have been days before I had been found. The tractor did not have a ROPS, and I told myself that it would be ok because I was careful. WRONG ! After that incident, I immediately built a ROPS and installed it and a seatbelt before using tractor again.

 

[Wildwillalaska]

Like @Tundra Tiger, I was morbidly obese, and most of my life. Athletic in my youth but after college and grad school, just obese. Luckily I got scared enough by some health markers before suffering a heart attack or blood clot like @odonata, and wanting to be a better example for my daughters, so made some drastic life changes beginning of 2017.

Also admit my boyhood dream of sheep hunting really lit and has kept a fire under my tail end. Lost just over 170lbs the next 18mo preparing for my first sheep hunt in 2018. Me on the left is August 2016, right August 2018. I’ve put more back on in muscle and some but not much fluff over the years since. And have enjoyed time in the sheep mounts every year since, even with my youngest daughter for her first ram in 2022.

That first sheep hunt in the Wrangells 2018, truly was the closest I ever was to death. I had to retrieve my buddies ram that fell 1/2 way down this slide, which terminated in glacier. We took two rams at once. Mine flipped over where he stood on some boulders, his was a couple lengths behind, walking up out of the slide and also dropped, but slid back and rolled down. So I climb down, part out and finally around midnight load up and try to climb out. Way too steep and sliding further down with each step. Unload front quarters and cape/head and try again, still no go. In the darkness decide I’ll have to climb this super steep spine on my left. Looks super sketch but only thing I can see to try. Make it about 10-15 min and already had about half my hand holds break off as I try to crawl/climb. Then had one about the size of a soccer ball come off as I had a lot of force on it, and strike me in the chest when it broke loose. Literally almost knocked me off to a long vertical fall. I was already scared, but in that moment I was so pissed at myself for being there. I knew it was going to be bad, just not that stupid-bad. Decided I had to go back down, and it was then I realized I simply couldn’t. Looking down for the first time it looked like a strait 50’ drop. Each side was cliff, but the spin had some angle to it, at least enough to slowly climb it appeared from the bottom. It was the first time I was absolutely unsure if I was going to make it…and thought my chances of doing so were quite a bit less than actually making the top without falling. And falling by that point was catastrophic injuries if I even survived the initial fall. Took another hour+ of white knuckle cursing myself and praying and ripping finger tips gripping sharp shale but I finally reached a point where it began to slope more and within 10min of there could actually stand and climb without hands. Reached the top half frozen, joyfully pissed and wore out. Partner had my ram all boned out and caped, so put his meat with mine and we jumped under the tarp for a few hours until is was bright enough to go back for the rest and find a sane route back up in the daylight.

Still to this day, even with car wrecks in my youth, think that was the closest I came to leaving this place, and the most scared and pissed at myself I’ve ever been.

 

[Boyd Brooks]

After I wrote my post and hit send, I got thinking of just how many near death experiences I have had, and witnessed of friends and co-workers, SHIT wow! A care free youth, short stint cutting and skidding timber, diamond drilling and a 34 year career as a power lineman, I need a couple Advil and a nap! Life is fragile, live large, as you don’t know what tomorrow brings.
Thank you Steve for this thread and my revisiting some scary memories, but also making me thankful for what I do have.

 

[leslie hetrick]

i tried to go up a ice chute on my honda ranch hand and near the top(about 20 yards to the top) my front wheels started to spin and the rear wheels pushed me to the left and lost traction and the honda and i rolled over several times before flipping me off. when i woke up i was jammed into a old stump and hurt like hell all over. the 4x4 was now on its side at the bottom of the chute, i stood up and knew right away i had several broken ribs and a large lump on the side of my head bleeding some. i got to the 4x4 and with a piece of broken log i got the 4x4 up righted and started it(it fired right up) and got to the farm house . at the emerg room they wrapped my cheast very tightly and gave me acp,s and a compress on the side of my head. i think the handlebars did my ribs in and my rifle(slung on my back) hit my head, not complety sure. lesson LEARNED.

 

[mdwest]

You want the whole list? Or just the top ten? Lol..

Took a 115gr federal hydrashok to the abdomen in1995… lost about 6” of intestines and my appendix… I suppose if you’re going to lose an entire internal organ that’s the one to lose lol… I’ve got about a 12” scar that runs from a few inches below the navel to about 3/4 the way up my abdomen to show for it… bullet hit me about 1” below my armor, entering to the left of the navel and came out on the rear of the right hip… made for an interesting 4 month recovery period…

Dropped a 3 wheeler off about a 15’ side of a bridge and rolled head over ass down roughly a 30’ embankment at I’d guess 30mph as a young teen…

Got hit by a guy driving an el Camino driving about 60mph at an intersection while in an open topped jeep… both the jeep and the el Camino rolled twice… I was in my young 20’s..

Took a spill off the top of an 8’ ladder 3 days ago… landed directly on my hip.. ended up with the biggest hematoma I’ve ever seen in my life… a full 2” thick and about 8” round… now 72 hours later I’m black literally from about an inch in front of my junk all the way around to the crack of my butt on the left side.. the bruise measures approximately 18” x 10” and is a deep, dark purple… thankfully the hematoma is dissipating now.. it’s maybe 1/2” thick and maybe 6” round now… could t hardly walk 3 days ago… I’m getting around ok now… but still pretty sore… I’m guessing it’s going to continue to suck for another several days…

 

[grand veneur]

There were perhaps many situations that could have turned out badly, but were not perceived that way at the time. I can remember one incident in particular, though I did not find it back then in the moment not particularly dangerous. As a hunter, I participated as backup against polar bears on an expedition in northeast Greenland and had at some time to collect with another team gasoline barrels for the outboard motors of our boats on a Danish military post on Ella Ø. We were traveling in two boats, but on the way back, I lost between the icebergs the contact with the other boat and got lost off the coast of Nord East Greenland. At that time, there was no GPS, and I did not have any navigational aid with me anyway, so I could only orient myself using the geographical features of the coastline. So I headed out to sea, checked out the coastline and since I still had some memories of what the entrance to the fjord leading to the camp looked like, I thankfully chose the right route. However, it took me more than 24 hours on see to finally arrive at the camp in Myggbykta, much to everyone's relief. Only in retrospect I realized how extremely dangerous this situation could have been if I had not chosen the correct fjord entry. Fortunately the weather in August was very stable and the daylight stay about 24 hours.

 

[Betterinthebush]

I was t-boned while mushing by a cow moose enraged from starvation while training 16 Alaska Huskies for the Iditarod.

The last thing I remember was a wall of black and brown and gray just before she plowed through me. I was in the middle of nowhere, 20 miles from the nearest cabin along the Talachulitna. Don’t remember recovering the team and sled. Don’t know how I made it back to the kennel. My wife, Dallas and Jen found me crawling around the kennel taking jackets and booties off dogs. I don’t remember anything about the event, except seeing her at the last moment. Dallas took the snowmobile and found the scene of the collision.

Concussion, fractured orbital socket, two herniated discs C-3/C-4 C-4/C-5, 12 stitches in my scalp. Didn’t start to come around for 3 days.

At the Iditarod banquet everyone had heard about it. Everyone was buying me beers to hear the story. I had a bigger headache the morning after the banquet than I remember having from the collision.